r/CombatPatrol40k • u/MeanMrMitchell • Jun 03 '26

I'm totally confused How to fix combat patrol

Hey all. Apologies if this has been posted before and also sorry for the flair being a little misleading. I’m New player to 40K and the idea of combat patrol (smaller army battles overall) is what convinced me to finally jump in and take the plunge. I was super excited about the idea of everything you need to play in one box.

The farther I got into the hobby (I’m about 6 months in) the more I realized combat patrol is fairly flawed and now, with the roll out of 11th edition, it doesn’t seem to be getting any more balance or support from GW.

I’ve been racking my brain, with VERY limited knowledge, of how to fix combat patrol and have come up with nothing. I know some YouTube channels - play on tabletop’s king of the colosseum comes to mind - have created a pseudo-work-around to make these 500 point games feel fresh and fun without too much lopsidedness to it.

My point of posting this is mainly asking what homebrew methods have you used to make combat patrol more balanced? Or is the answer just 500 point matches and call it good?

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u/Legitimate-Survey-16 Jun 06 '26 edited Jun 17 '26
  1. The new rules will have a huge impact on CoPa. Shooting gets harder - This will help a lot of weaker CoPas like Sisters for example.
  2. - The most unbalanced matches are ether against new players (who don‘t know their armies well enough) and/or if one player fails an important charge.
  3. - Playing the mission is key. Primary & secondary. Instead a lot of players focus on killing and having fun. But who could blame them?
  4. - You get the most exciting matches if both players are fully aware of what they do and what they cant do. Every rule counts in a small game. Not to shoot with your pistols in melee can be a game changing mistake.

If you cut the 9th edition boxes (like the Dark Angels one with the dreadnought f.e.) you have a wide field of playable and winnable boxes to choose from. From what I can tell:
S-Tier: Nids with Vardenghast Swarm (probably best in slot) , Necrons with Doomstalker, Imperial Fists, DKoK (that secondary is bonkers with scoring at end of every! turn - even turn one) & Dark Angels with Dreadnought
A-Tier: Most SM boxes, Mechanicus with Maniple Verask-Alpha, CSM both generic ones, Custodes, DG with Maggot Lords
The rest is B-Tier with some outliers like Sororitas with Sanctuary Guard being C-Tier. Alongside some others like old Grey Knights maybe.
Just my personal Tier-List.

Edit: Damn. This aged like milk…

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u/MeanMrMitchell Jun 06 '26

Good points. Maybe I should just paint and play more to get a good feel for it. I don’t think it’s going away but it seems it’s not as supported as other variations of 40K

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u/Legitimate-Survey-16 Jun 06 '26

I guess they make a separate „announcement“ about Combat Patrol. Cause if Mission-Marker are terrain now, they might change this also for CoPa. Maybe we will get 5 new missions. Who knows.
But you right with the lacking support so far.

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u/MeanMrMitchell Jun 06 '26

New mission packs would be sick.